A writer moves from Chicago to an Oregon beach town to improve her tempestuous relationship with her recovering addict boyfriend but finds their romance endangered more than ever — only this time, it's her fault.

A mercurial girl named Pony crashes into the life of protagonist Henry Thigpin and his older roommate Mike, and the three form an offbeat domestic triangle. When Henry falls for Pony even after she has warned him not to, Pony works to sabotage their friendship.

While her boyfriend travels through Europe, a paralegal moves into a new apartment with two new roommates. Against the backdrop of their wildly dissimilar personalities, she reexamines her values.

When a young adult Tokyoite takes his younger cousin to a medical examination in his hometown, he recalls a hospital trip with his now-deceased childhood friend.

A professor leaves her job and her husband for her ancestral home of Newfoundland. There, she confronts depression, isolation, old friends, and old love.

A young, Black woman clings desperately to a friendship and a relationship which both ended long ago. Through clashes with a "godmother" who appears as an apparition in her apartment, the woman finally resolves to move on.

A Russian, fifty-two-year-old cancer survivor living in New York struggles to come to terms with the fact that his dog—which had been left behind by his ex-girlfriend—might be dying.

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

An ex-couple spends the afternoon together catching up in a valley they used to call their own, a month after the man loses his job. He paints, and she watches birds.

A young girl feels under-appreciated and left out during a family trip to Italy when her older sister and their college-age babysitter engage in a romantic affair.